A HAIR STYLIST was stabbed to death as part of a sexual fantasy hatched by an Oxford University employee and a US professor in an online chat room, a court has heard.

The plan between Andrew Warren, a senior treasury assistant at Somerville College, and Professor Wyndham Lathem, included killing someone and then themselves, prosecutors told a judge in the US state of Illinois at a hearing on Sunday.

A prosecutor shared new details about the July 27 killing of Lathem's boyfriend, 26-year-old Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau.

The court was told the victim was stabbed 70 times at Lathem’s Chicago apartment with such brutality that he was nearly decapitated. 

His throat was slit and pulmonary artery torn.

Lathem, 46, had communicated with Warren, 56, for months before the murder about ‘carrying out their sexual fantasies of killing others and then themselves’, lawyer Natosha Toller told the court.

While the prosecutor used the plural in talking about the alleged fantasy to kill, she did not say there were other victims.

Judge Adam Bourgeois at one point shook his head in apparent disgust as he listened to the prosecutor offer a chilling narrative of the killing. He later deemed both men potentially dangerous and flight risks, ordering them to remain in jail pending trial on first-degree murder charges.
Lathem and Warren – a British citizen employed as a financial official at Oxford University – were dressed in their own clothes as they appeared at the Chicago court.

Warren has been suspended from his job as senior treasury assistant at Somerville College. 

Lathem paid for Warren’s ticket to the United States and he picked him up at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport a few days before the killing, the prosecutor said.

On July 26, the day before the killing, Lathem booked a room for Warren near the apartment, Ms Toller said.

Mr Cornell-Duranleau had been asleep in Lathem’s apartment when Lathem let Warren into the 10th-floor flat around 4.30am on July 27. 

As Warren stood in a doorway, Lathem crept up to Mr Cornell-Duranleau and began plunging a 6-inch drywall saw knife into his chest and neck, Ms Toller said.

Lathem had told Warren to take video of the killing using his mobile phone, but Warren did not end up recording it, the prosecutor said. 
When Mr Cornell-Duranleau awoke, he began screaming and fought back. 

Lathem yelled at Warren, asking him to help subdue Mr Cornell-Duranleau, the prosecutor said. 

Warren ran over to cover the victim’s mouth, then struck him in the head with a heavy lamp in an attempt to silence him, she said. As Lathem stabbed the victim, Warren left the room and returned with two kitchen knives.

Warren bent over the victim and joined Lathem in stabbing him, the prosecutor said. 

The stab wounds included 21 to the chest and abdomen, and 26 in the back, as well as cuts on his hands. His lungs were both punctured. There were wounds to his colon, spleen and liver.

The pair then fled and travelled across the country before surrendering to California authorities on August 4 after an eight-day manhunt.

At one point, the victim bit Warren’s hand as he struggled to fight off the attack.

While prosecutors said Lathem and Warren had concocted a plan to kill themselves after the stabbing, Ms Toller did not say why they never followed through with it.

After showering, Lathem and Warren left the apartment an hour after the stabbing began, the prosecutor said

They then  rented a car and  Lathem left an anonymous $5,610 (£4,360) donation - in cash - at the Howard Brown Health Centre in Chicago in the name “Cornell-Duranleau”.

They then drove to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and, 13 hours after the first payment, Lathem went to its public library and wrote a $1,000 (£777) cheque as a donation also in the victim’s name, the prosecutor said.

Ms Toller said Lathem, while on the run, sent a video message to his parents and friends, admitting to the killing and telling them “he is not the person people thought he was”.

Lathem’s lawyer, Barry Sheppard, told reporters after the hearing that people should not 'engage in a rush to judgment'.

The judge set a Tuesday hearing for the men, when another judge will be assigned to oversee the criminal case. Both would have a chance to enter pleas at a later arraignment.